


Finger on the Trigger, Devil in Your Eye

by Kgdragoon



Series: Definitely NOT a Spaghetti Western [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Bounty Hunter Jesse McCree, Character Study, Deadeye (Overwatch), Exploration of Deadeye, Gen, Post Blackwatch, Pre-Overwatch Recall, Supernatural Elements, but really... what is deadeye? and what would it be like to use?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29300373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kgdragoon/pseuds/Kgdragoon
Summary: Every good lawman, scoundrel, and gunslinger has an ace up their sleeve. Jesse McCree's just so happens to be inexplicable, deadly, and kinda itchy.Or, stories about Deadeye.
Series: Definitely NOT a Spaghetti Western [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2165751
Kudos: 7





	1. Deadeye, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Try to kill it all away, But I remember everything](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17282531) by [JustWaitAndSee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustWaitAndSee/pseuds/JustWaitAndSee). 
  * Inspired by [Not So Lonely Cowboy](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22870483) by [feral_fake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/feral_fake/pseuds/feral_fake). 



> So... I fell down the Overwatch rabbit-hole. One thing I found immensely interesting was McCree and his Deadeye, it got me to wondering just what it was, how it worked, and what it would be like to have. The world of Overwatch seems very sci-fi, technology and science focused, but there are also murder-y dragon spirits, so...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Being a Bounty Hunter has its ups and downs.

He ends up surrounded by seven Talon lackeys, and how they got the drop on him is anyone’s guess. One moment he’d been on a milk run, collecting a no-name bounty, and the next, a dozen or so heavily armed men had come out of the shadows… so more like than not, his bounty wasn’t so no-name after all. When he got out of this, he’d be havin’ _words_ with his informant.

He’d ended up havin’ to leave his meal-ticket behind, and that did sting, but he still reckoned it was better than gettin’ filled with more holes than swiss cheese. And if the chase that came after was a mite too easy, well that was enough to put anyone on edge; he’d still kept on runnin’ and takin’ potshots though. Thing is, he didn’t know if what finally did him in was his own damned cockiness or sheer rotten luck, because it sure as hell wasn’t the competence of the folk tryin’ to kill him. He’d still managed to hit more than a handful of ‘em just shootin’ blindly, and that just stunk of carelessness to the highest degree. So when he turned into an alleyway and found that it was the kind that _ended_ , well he wasn’t inclined to give them the credit. 

There weren’t that many of ‘em left anyway.

He turns. Finds himself surrounded. Levels his gun. And brings that old warmth deep inside of him to a boil.

“It’s High Noon,” he drawls, and the thing is that it ain’t, and hardly ever actually is high noon when he uses it, but just the words themselves are vitally important. 

The heat spreads out from somewhere behind his ribs until that ol’ familiar burn itches on his skin, like standing under a New Mexico sun at its peak. And, for a moment, he swears he can feel a crackle of electricity in the air; smell that clean, earthy petrichor that comes after a desert rain.

His eyes itch, sting, and then outright burn.

The world slows to a crawl. 

Everything goes dark and unimportant, especially around the edges… everything except the men in front of him. He can see each one of ‘em so clearly that he’d swear they’re lined in red, and he knows exactly where to shoot to do the most damage. To drop ‘em in a single hit. Whenever he uses Deadeye, McCree swears he can see The Reaper loomin' over his enemies. 

He fans the hammer of his old six-shooter, and between one breath and the next he is the only soul left alive in that alleyway.

...Well, he might just be able to collect his bounty after all.


	2. Deadeye, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What is Deadeye?  
> There are three prevailing theories.

No one’s ever been entirely sure just what Deadeye is, but there’re workin’ theories.

Back when he’d been in Deadlock, people’d thought he’d gotten his hands on some top-secret type tech. It even made a kind o’ sense, if you took him sayin’ “it’s high noon” as an activation phrase. It’d caused problems for him when he’d been too young and too scrawny to properly fight back. Some of the much bigger and much stupider members of Deadlock had been sure that if they could just get their hands on his Peacekeeper, then they’d be able to shoot as well as Jesse McCree. Sometimes they even manged to wrangle his gun from him, but it never did seem to improve their aim any. Eventually they stopped, especially once he got big enough to be properly intimidatin’. 

He still took to sleepin’ with his gun under his pillow.

*

It’s almost funny how when Overwatch found out about his little trick, they’d thought the exact same thing as not-too-bright Deadlock gangsters, at first. Then they’d scanned his gun, and found nothin’ more’n an old relic with a couple modern modifications that still should o’ been scrapped a long time ago. They’d decided to scan him next, even though he reckoned he’d remember somethin’ like major surgery and havin’ an implant. As if he could o’ afforded somethin’ like that at any point in his life anyway. The scans came back and showed that he also happened to be a relic of the past, and about as technological as a rock. Some of the other members of Blackwatch had joked that he was about as smart as one too.

Bein’ Overwatch, of course they couldn’t just be happy lettin’ sleepin’ dogs lie. No, they had to know the truth, or at least come up with somethin’ that was close enough. So they’d decided his Deadeye was probably the result of some old science experiment, the kind that stayed in your genes and got passed down to the next generation. Never mind that they couldn’t find any proof o’ that, whatever’d been done seemed to’ve been awful subtle and they were busy folk, too busy to map an entire person’s genome for no good reason.

So, when he said it was “high noon”, despite it bein’ no such thing, well Gabe just brushed it off as a verbal tick. Everythin’ fit into a nice little box, probably even better’n Deadlock’s theory had. 

*

There was, of course, another explanation. One he’d heard growing up from his momma, when she’d been alive; from the farmhands too, before the farm had gone under. But mostly he’d heard it from the superstitious little old ladies in town. They took one look a’ him and said he had the devil in his eye, and told him if he didn’t keep it in check then it’d rule his destiny. It was no surprise, growin’ up, that he’d developed a fair suspicion of little old ladies.

Personally, he wasn’t real fond of the last theory. Preferred technology and the like to spirits and demons. And he certainly didn’t remember meetin’ no desert spirit anyway.

Still, there was one thing he couldn’t quite shake. One incontrovertible, rather inconvenient fact of the universe; one that could _not_ be changed without changin’ the laws of physics themselves, and that was that Peacekeeper was a six-shooter.

Funny then, how when he uses Deadeye he’d swear he can shoot seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I was writing the first part, I couldn't help but add a couple clues for the second chapter even though I wasn't 100% sure where it was going... so it ended up being less ambiguous that I intended.
> 
> Anyway, my idea for this story was as part of a series... but my muse abandons me, so we'll see what happens.


End file.
